Mega Man Zero (GBA, 2002)

• No ability gating and no movement abilities gained (soft combat gating, elemental effects are underused in levels compared to some earlier games - can't use frozen enemies as platforms for example)

• Fairly open structure (can choose between a few missions at a time, you can even continue the story after failing some missions), Some alternate paths and shortcuts, Sometimes you revisit old areas but find new enemies and eventually different layouts further into the level

• Save feature (three slots, save in-between stages), Lives system w/ a 9 life limit (1-ups/continues are pretty rare)

• Checkpoints before bosses

• New upgrades in the form of cyber elves (often one time use bonuses like in Rockman 8 FC but some have permanent effects such as increasing your life bar - elves larger than 1x1 tile in the menu have a permanent effect, need to feed some of them to activate their abilities with crystals that you collect throughout the game)

• Pretty intricate ranking system (time, enemies killed, damage taken, elves used, retries used), The ranking system is pretty forgiving when it comes to time but not so much when it comes to taking damage and elves (not even permanent ones used outside of the mission such as sub tanks (even if not used in the mission they cost you ten points) though you can use one use-elves outside of missions)

• Hidden items

• Some environmental effects (weather machine near the disposal center, sort of-quicksand, the mechaniloid going through buildings/walls, collapsing building in the retrieval mission)

• No map

• Some difficulty scaling - most bosses change their behaviour a bit to make them harder if you're at a high rank (A or S) when encountering them

• Unlockable hard mode and easy mode, Be A or S rank to get into the room behind Ciel (there's a cyber elf there but nothing else of interest)

• Exploding traps also affect other enemies

• Minor sequence breaking possibilities (bounce off enemies with the rod - only useful once or twice though, can melee attack through walls to reach some cyber elves because after you open an elf container the freed elf will move towards you a bit, bird elf to reach higher quicker in one stage)

• Insta-kill spikes during boss fights and in some other spots (along with some pits; can move on spikes during invincibility time) however there are elves that prevent death from these

• Some backtracking - can’t quickly teleport back to base when revisiting a beaten area (need to go to the teleporter)

• Off screen enemy respawning (can be annoying due to the low res)

• Some interface issues (can't see how long you have left to level up a weapon, no hints for some elf locations (would've been less tedious to find them all if the ranking screen or Ciel told you how many were left in that mission), The game is a bit vague about cyber elf uses and what kind of elf you’ve just picked up when you find a new one (it just says "found a cyber elf!!" and then you’ll have to go into the menu and remember how many you had in each category and what they did/what their names were), Can't see how many crystals you've fed an elf with unless you use the teleporter (trans server))

• Can’t just hold dash to keep dash jumping here (see MMX4)

• Some missable elves (for example there are temporary enemies in some missions that you need to kill 5 of to get an elf)

• You'll still get health drops when at full health (would've sped up crystal collecting considerably to only get crystals at that point)

• Can't revisit some mission areas and the game doesn't tell you in advance which ones (so find any elves you can during these missions: desert, train; for the subway you need to find your way in there and find the teleporter after the rescue mission (with the green flying boss harpuia) since there was a soldier blocking your way when beginning the mission and another blocking the way to the subway (which is connected to the broken road leading to that boss) previously)

• No ammo

Playthrough - Video Review - Mini Review

Influenced by: Mega Man Legends, Probably Metroid and Igavania series, possibly Phantom 2040, Tomba, Front Mission: Gun Hazard, Armored Core, Hyper Iria

Influenced: Possibly Strider 2014, Hollow Knight